No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth -- I'm still alive and kicking! :) Just not blogging; but that's about to change. I've always been very much intrigued by the idea of blogging, but every blog I've started has failed, and in every new blog introduction I put together, I wrote exactly that same sentence: "Every blog I've started has failed." So far, my blogging record has two deleted general-interest blogs, one abandoned general-interest blog, and two abandoned thematic blogs. And then there's this one.
I won't try to fill you in on everything that's happened while I've been away. I just want to set up a firm resolution to blog as often as I can throughout the summer and beyond. I started up a journal (that, too, has been abandoned for a little under a week, but I'll open it up again sometime soon, I'm sure) and I saw just how therapeutic this could be. I didn't tie myself down to spelling, grammar, or any specific style of writing; I just allowed my words run straight from my brain to my computer screen without filtering them much. I didn't mull over them in my mind until I had nothing left to say. I just wrote. And it was nice.
So this blog isn't going to be some lovely, organized, poetic masterpiece; more likely, it's going to be a mess. But I still hope you enjoy it.
I'm not going to go on to anything of real substance in this post... I just want to re-introduce myself to the blogging world, and, hopefully, this will be the first of many "letters to the world" by which you'll get to know me. :)
I will, however, leave you with a picture I took recently.
I don't know what it is about this one, but I like it. There's a spontenaiety about it; like a glimpse you catch when you're turning your head to look at something else. Although it's a technical, compositional, and Photoshop failure (I've used the word failure a lot in this post, haven't I?), it still gives me hope that, someday, I'll learn to take portrait shots.
Last year, I took Yearbook at my high school. With ever-so-slight smugness, I thought, This will be a breeze for me; I know photography in and out. Big mistake. taking photographs of people was more different than anything I'd ever done before. Being able to catch that special moment -- the turn of a head, the twinkle in an eye, the crooked beginnings of a smile -- turned out to be close-to-impossible for me. My action photos were badly-timed; my posed shots were flat and lifeless. When I hadn't mastered the art by the end of the semester, I decided to crawl back into my flower-and-landscape shell and give up on portraiture altogether. And I've always longed to go back.
What does this have to do with the above photograph? Well, that's what I think all my portraits have been missing. That "in-the-moment" freedom; those little details like the shadow and lighting that naturally fall into place, instead of me painstakingly composing them into their respective corners. I hope I can find some willing models so I can translate that feeling to portrait shots. 'Till then...
Oksy
I won't try to fill you in on everything that's happened while I've been away. I just want to set up a firm resolution to blog as often as I can throughout the summer and beyond. I started up a journal (that, too, has been abandoned for a little under a week, but I'll open it up again sometime soon, I'm sure) and I saw just how therapeutic this could be. I didn't tie myself down to spelling, grammar, or any specific style of writing; I just allowed my words run straight from my brain to my computer screen without filtering them much. I didn't mull over them in my mind until I had nothing left to say. I just wrote. And it was nice.
So this blog isn't going to be some lovely, organized, poetic masterpiece; more likely, it's going to be a mess. But I still hope you enjoy it.
I'm not going to go on to anything of real substance in this post... I just want to re-introduce myself to the blogging world, and, hopefully, this will be the first of many "letters to the world" by which you'll get to know me. :)
I will, however, leave you with a picture I took recently.
I don't know what it is about this one, but I like it. There's a spontenaiety about it; like a glimpse you catch when you're turning your head to look at something else. Although it's a technical, compositional, and Photoshop failure (I've used the word failure a lot in this post, haven't I?), it still gives me hope that, someday, I'll learn to take portrait shots.
Last year, I took Yearbook at my high school. With ever-so-slight smugness, I thought, This will be a breeze for me; I know photography in and out. Big mistake. taking photographs of people was more different than anything I'd ever done before. Being able to catch that special moment -- the turn of a head, the twinkle in an eye, the crooked beginnings of a smile -- turned out to be close-to-impossible for me. My action photos were badly-timed; my posed shots were flat and lifeless. When I hadn't mastered the art by the end of the semester, I decided to crawl back into my flower-and-landscape shell and give up on portraiture altogether. And I've always longed to go back.
What does this have to do with the above photograph? Well, that's what I think all my portraits have been missing. That "in-the-moment" freedom; those little details like the shadow and lighting that naturally fall into place, instead of me painstakingly composing them into their respective corners. I hope I can find some willing models so I can translate that feeling to portrait shots. 'Till then...
Oksy
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